


Just Exactly As I Am

by likethenight



Category: TOLKIEN J. R. R. - Works & Related Fandoms, The Lord of the Rings (Movies), The Lord of the Rings - All Media Types, The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Aromantic, Asexual Character, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-10
Updated: 2020-07-10
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:14:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 668
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25181578
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/likethenight/pseuds/likethenight
Summary: Pippin has never much liked chasing after girls - or boys, for that matter.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 22
Collections: Tolkien Gen Week 2020





	Just Exactly As I Am

**Author's Note:**

  * For [starlightwalking](https://archiveofourown.org/users/starlightwalking/gifts).



> Written for Tolkien Gen Week 2020, day 5, diversity. I wasn't sure what to write for this prompt, but then I remembered that about ten years ago I did a lot of figuring-myself-out, and thought perhaps I could put a bit of that into a story. So here is an aroace!Pippin, figuring out his place in the world, dealing with Incorrigible Flirt Merry Brandybuck, and channelling his inner Gandalf just a little bit.
> 
> Dedicated to the lovely starlightwalking, as a thank you for organising the event and giving me the opportunity and inspiration to write a few little gen pieces again after *mumblemumble* years. I have had so much fun! <333

Pippin doesn’t much want to chase after girls - or boys, for that matter - as Merry was always doing back home in the Shire, before all of this. Pippin always went along with it, because he went everywhere with Merry, did more or less everything with him, but he didn’t particularly enjoy it. He thought it was just because he was young, back then, but now, after a year has passed that felt like ten, he is much older than he was, and he still doesn’t much want to chase after _anyone_ , thank you very much. It makes him feel wrong inside, the thought of - well, you know, _that_ , and all the other things that go with it.

He’ll have to get married now he’s back, he supposes, that’s what everyone does, and if he can find a Hobbit-lass who can be as much of a friend to him as Merry has been, then maybe that would be all right, but he doesn’t want to do all the other things that people expect of you if you’re married. Maybe it would be easier not to get married at all, like Frodo’s Uncle Bilbo.

After everything was over, back in Minas Tirith when they were all recuperating, Pippin watched Merry happily flirting with more or less everyone - although quite a few of them, being Big People, didn’t realise that was what he was doing, which was quite funny to watch on occasion - but he didn’t go along with it this time. They’d spent time apart, they’d done some wildly different things and those things had changed them in different ways. It wasn’t that Pippin didn’t still feel as close to Merry as if they were brothers. It was just that Pippin didn’t quite feel as though he had to go along with every last one of Merry’s flights of fancy, not any more. Not when it made him feel like _that_ inside.

Merry speculated once, while they were still laid up recovering, what it might be like to kiss the Lady Éowyn - or King Éomer - and Pippin could only come up with ‘soft-but-hard and a bit frightening’ and ‘scratchy’ respectively, although he didn’t say so. He couldn’t quite understand why Merry would want to kiss either of them - weren’t they his friends? Pippin would have liked to sit with them and talk, to hear their stories, but he certainly didn’t want to kiss them. It was the same with the Elves who had turned up for Aragorn’s wedding. Merry kept going on about how pretty they were, and flirting with them, not that it got him anywhere. Pippin thought they were certainly pretty, yes, very nice to look at, and perhaps it might be nice to be friends with them, and sit and look at them and listen to all the tales they must have to tell about their long, long lives. But that was all.

Pippin sometimes wonders if there is something wrong with him, something missing that Merry has and he does not. But he doesn’t feel as though there is something wrong, and he doesn’t feel as though anything is missing at all. This is just how he is. He isn’t wrong, or broken. He just needs to find someone who understands him like Merry (mostly) does. 

“Fool of a Took!” he imagines Gandalf saying, if he had ever worked up the courage to ask his wizard friend for advice. “There are more things in this world than you are given to understand, and I think you have learned that the world of the Shire is not all there is in Middle-Earth, have you not?” Pippin has indeed learned that lesson, and if the world he knew before was only a tiny part of the whole, then perhaps the things he thought were true before are only a part of all the things in the world. He is just as much a part of the world as Merry or anyone else is, just exactly as he is.


End file.
